


Evergreen

by orphan_account



Series: Fearful Symmetry [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Apologies, Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Estrangement, F/M, Polyamory, Reconciliation, Reconciliation Sex, Season/Series 03
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-13
Updated: 2014-04-13
Packaged: 2018-01-19 07:29:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1460905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mary wants to apologise. John won't answer.</p><p>Sherlock will.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evergreen

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cloama](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cloama/gifts).



> for alicia, with love. <3
> 
> again, aderyn and shiny saved me from myself. thank you both forever. <3
> 
> set during the Lost Six Months in HLV.

Baker Street smells like ash. Like John. Like evergreen (candle, not bough--votive burning on the desk--Mrs Hudson’s attempt to mask the scent from the kitchen--something human Sherlock let decay, hopes will quicken, help him hear the dead).

Mary sits in John’s chair, breathes _(come home)_ his aftershave from fabric, wipes her palms on her knees. Sherlock sets her chamomile tea beside her and sits, window behind him, late afternoon light catching the dust.

The memory stick glints next to Sherlock’s cup. 

“When I said I was sorry,” Mary starts. Picks up her tea. She won’t repeat her last time here: a client, silent, _furniture_. “I meant it. I still do.”

“Obvious.” Sherlock sips his coffee and grimaces: _decaf_. “You tell me often enough.” 

He believes her. Why, then, has he invited her _here_ , his ground and John’s? “Sherlock, I”-- _(trust you wonder if this is a trap trust you)_ \--“don’t understand, I--.”

“Let sentiment get the better of you.” The stick (Sherlock read it: has John?) flips between his fingers. “You were trained to eliminate loose ends, Mary, and yet: here we are.”

Steam drifts as Mary hooks half a smile over her cup. “Flattered?”

“Should I be?” His eyes (no single colour: gorgeous) narrow, glimmer.  

_Yes._

She wants to apologise in bed, not quite the way she would with John (she wants John; she likes Sherlock, finds him interesting), but Sherlock is--not interested, one way or another. Content to kiss her forehead on her wedding day.

Mary sips. Leaves lipstick on porcelain. “How’s John?”

“Furious.” Sherlock’s cup clinks as he sets it down, legs crossed, bare foot tapping against the rug. “Coming around.”

Mary’s hand goes to her belly. Week twenty-five: her life revolves around words, _(gunfire)_ bursts she texts Sherlock between their meetings: _The baby hasn’t moved. John won’t answer. Are you all right?_

The baby’s a girl. John hasn’t asked. Sherlock has. Mary won’t tell.

Needs a secret. Still.

Mary watches Sherlock watch her, his fingers tapping on his armrests, his mouth a line, his gaze flicking over her hair, face, shirt, posture. “You’re trying to see me the way John sees--the way John saw me,” she says, “when he”-- _(loved me)_ \--“didn’t know.”

Sherlock blinks as he sets down the stick. “Why would I--?”

“I did the same with you, at first.” Mary sets down her tea and leans forward, hands on her knees, as Sherlock uncrosses his legs. “The only John I’d ever known--quiet, lost, beautiful John--died the moment he recognised you. You, Sherlock, of all people, must know how… _luminous_ he was. Of course I wanted to know who that John, _my_ John, died for.”

She doesn’t say: _I watched you, at the restaurant. You died, too. When you realised what you’d done._

He doesn’t say: _As John did at Leinster Gardens. When he realised what you’d done._

Or: _As you did, here, in Baker Street. When you realised what you’d done._

Sherlock wipes his palms on his trousers as he leans forward: mirrors her: _interesting_. “He was supposed to have been your ticket to normalcy.”

“And I was supposed to have been his.” She blinks away tears, uncertain who they’re for. Reaches for Sherlock’s hands--so much larger than John’s--and traces paths from his knuckles to his wrists.

His eyelids flutter.

He moves toward her touch.

“He ought to have known you weren’t,” Sherlock says, low. “He’s a doctor. He saw your scar.”

_Oh._

Not a trap, then. 

Mary licks her lips. “Did John--?”

A draft down the chimney: the candle goes out.

“No. I deduced it the night we met--well. The tattoo, anyway.”

“I could show you.” Sherlock nods, shifts in his seat; Mary works her shirt over her head, drops it to the floor, and, shivering against the cold air, tucks her hair behind her ears.

A cratered crescent moon, darkness inked around it, sits below her heart.

Matches Sherlock’s scar.

“I told John,” says Mary, “that--.”

“The tattoo became infected and left the scar, but you lied. The scar came first.” Sherlock’s hands search her hands, her arms, for old wounds. “You weren’t defending yourself when the bullet hit: you didn’t believe that… she?”--Sherlock waits; Mary nods--“would shoot you.”

Mary smiles. Aches for Sherlock. For John. For herself. For who they were before their bullets.

For what they are all--slow, stumbling, collateral damage for a wake--unlearning.

His fingertips follow the outline of her scar. Graze beneath her breasts.

“Sherlock.” Her breath comes shallow. “Not that John isn’t already”-- _(sleeping with you)_ \--“angry with me, but....”

“He doesn’t mind.” Mary inhales as Sherlock’s thumbs brush across her nipples, tease them stiff beneath fabric. “I told him you would be here while he was at Harry’s, and he told me not to take up the whole bed.”

 _Oh._  

“When he said we should’ve got married, you and me.” Mary takes off her bra, then frees Sherlock’s shirt from his trousers and unbuttons it. “He knew.”

She slides his shirt and dressing gown off his shoulders. There’s a string of love bites along his left clavicle. Sherlock watches her, grave, as she touches them, touches--carefully--his scar.

“Interesting choice of words, ‘you and me’.” He leans back and lifts Mary’s feet into his lap. Unties and removes her shoes, then her socks, so he can massage her arches: bliss. “‘You and I’ would have been correct, which you know perfectly well, so why that particular mistake?”

 _Obvious._ “You know where I’m from, Sherlock.”

Mary sets her feet on the floor; Sherlock undoes his flies and slides off his trousers and pants. He’s not aroused. “You hide it well, most of the time,” he says, kneeling between her legs and helping her strip. “You really are very clever.”

Sherlock-- _deduces_ comes to mind but isn’t quite right--feels her bare belly, his hands inquisitive around her. He presses the side of his face beneath her navel and listens.

“Is that what you like?” Mary touches his hair. Decides he doesn’t know how beautiful he is when he concentrates. “Cleverness?”

He hums and rests his cheek on the inside of her thigh. “That, and a certain strain of military competence.” Idly, almost, he trails fingers along her labia, through her (dark: so much for the carefully kept-up roots) hair. “The baby still hasn’t moved?”

 _And John still hasn’t read the stick, or we’d be talking about him._ “Afraid not.”

“Boy or girl?”

Mary smiles. “From where you’re sitting, I would think it would be obvious.”

His thumb slips between her folds, strokes her clit from base to tip.

Does it again.

“You know what I mean,” Sherlock says. “Move closer. You’re too far from the edge.”

Mary moves.

Closes her eyes.

“And you know I won’t tell,” she says. Ends on a moan: sudden warmth: Sherlock’s mouth.

She tries to be careful, to keep her motions small, as Sherlock--his tongue broad, flat, perfectly in tempo, setting a rhythm she knows from a song but can’t place--licks the length of her clit, sucks her, teases her with his teeth, and she restrains herself until Sherlock groans and pulls her hands behind his head-- _more_ \--so she bucks against him, holds him in place while she fucks him to the rhythm he set, her face tingling and hot, her cunt clenching around nothing and it’s so good, so good, and--.

Mary comes in his mouth and recognises the song--her wedding waltz--in the same _(Sherlock Jesus Christ I love)_ seven syllables.

The room comes back in pieces: the dust floating around Sherlock’s chair, the clothes lying on the rug, the mirror hanging over the fireplace.

“Would you,” Sherlock says, stares up, hair wild, hands on her thighs, so fucking _lonely_ , and Mary says _of course_ at the same time he says _please_.

She kisses him--he tastes like her and kisses like John--and maneuvers them to the floor. Sherlock lays himself down, head to the fireplace, and she straddles him, the curve of her belly resting in the hollow of his. He’s soft between her legs; she kisses his cheek. “What do you want?”

His hips answer. Move against her, slow, the rhythm _(the waltz)_ the same as before.

She watches his face change--lines soften, lips part, eyelids flicker--as she feels him grow aroused. His cock slides between her folds, against her clit (enough pressure to interest her: not enough to make her come again: perfect), and she rocks against him. Nuzzles his face. Hums approval when his hands light on her hips.

The light from the window fades as Mary’s arms tire. The rug digs into her knees. The crease between Sherlock’s eyebrows suggests the taking of some interminable test, though his body language--hips moving to meet hers, hands curious over her curves, head tilted back as he moans--says _pleasure_.

“Really,” Mary says, “we can stop any time you--.”

“No, I want, please, but--.” Sherlock swallows. “You have to tell me.”

_Oh._

Mary leans forward. Rests her lips on Sherlock’s ear, her fingers on Sherlock’s scar. “Sherlock,” she murmurs, her breath warm against her face, “ _now_.”

A groan. A pulse: she can’t tell whose. A wet heat that blooms between them.

Sherlock sighs her name.

Mary helps him stand, leads him to the bedroom. They curl on their sides under the covers, Sherlock behind her, his face tucked against her nape.

The sheets smell like John. Mary rubs her cheek against the pillow. Inhales.

“He’ll come around by Christmas,” Sherlock says into her hair. “I’m sure of it.”  

A flutter.

Mary stills.

Sherlock stills.

A flutter.

“What’s,” Sherlock says, “why are you--.”

He won’t feel what she feels, but she presses his palm to her belly, still.

A flutter: the baby moves.


End file.
